Scientific reports
March 27, 2024
Alyssa Torske, Benno Bremer, Britta Karen Hölzel et al.
24 citations
A 31-day web-based mindfulness meditation training, compared to a health training condition, increased mindfulness and reduced stress-eating, emotional-eating tendencies, and food cravings in 66 meditation-naïve adults who tend to stress-eat. These behavioral improvements were accompanied by changes in resting-state functional connectivity between the hypothalamus, reward regions, and default mode network areas, as well as between the insula and somatosensory areas. Additional connectivity changes occurred in brain regions linked to emotion regulation, awareness, attention, and sensory integration. The correlations between connectivity and behavioral changes suggest neural mechanisms underlying mindfulness effects on stress-eating.
Scientific reports
December 19, 2023
María Guadalupe Mora Álvarez, Britta Karen Hölzel, Benno Bremer et al.
19 citations
A 31-day web-based mindfulness meditation training reduced perceived stress and anxiety and improved overall reaction time on an attention test, though no specific attentional components were affected. The training also increased flow experiences. Brain imaging showed increased activity in the superior frontal gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex, and right hippocampus during an alerting task, and decreased stress and anxiety correlated with right hippocampus activation. Increased flow correlated with activity in all those areas. Diffusion imaging revealed improved white matter microstructure in the right uncinate fasciculus, linking the right hippocampus to frontal areas. An active control group showed no significant changes.
Scientific reports
April 25, 2025
Alyssa Torske, Doris Schicker, Jessica Freiherr et al.
3 citations
Frequent exposure to food cues in modern environments can desensitize sensory systems, reducing eating pleasure and prompting overeating to compensate. A 31-day web-based mindfulness training, compared to health training, may reduce this habituation response to high-calorie food stimuli in stressed, hungry individuals. The training appears to increase neural activity in brain regions for visual, olfactory, and emotion processing, potentially improving attention to food and enhancing eating pleasure, which could curb overeating and associated weight gain and disease risks.